Talking-machine cabinet.



A. D. IONES.

TALKING MACHINE CABINET.

APPLICATION man FEB. l. 1911.

Patented J 1'1110 5, 1917.

D' sTATEs PATE oEoE.

ALV D. 'IOISI'IES,l 0F PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA.

TALKIN (1t-MACHINE CINET.

mama.

method of dampening out sympatheticl sounds set up in the supportingstructure or cabinet of a sound reproducing or conveying device anddealing in this instance with the supporting structure or cabinetportion of a talking machine, of the internal horn type. Cabinets asVthey have been built in the past are constructed in such a manner andof such material as to be extremely resonant, there-K by sympathizingwith the original tones coming from the record, thus setting up foreignsounds throughout their structure, where as a matter of fact, only theamplifier itself should respond to the original vibrations, and this toa limited extent, and only at its mouth,-as a talking machine is arehandling device and should only amplify by reason of the shape of thepassage through which itssounds must travel rather than by secondaryvibrationsset up in the walls of the cabinet, which in every instancedistorts and in the majority of cases renders unrecognizable many of themore beautiful shadings of the music coming from the record. As stated,a talking machine is essentially a rehandling or reproducing soundinstrument, consequently we must consider this device almost if notentirely acoustically neutral. The cabinet portion or supportingstructure should not play any part in the building up of the tonescoming from the record, which should be left entirely to the amplifyingpassage, which is of the utmost importance with respect to shape, sizeand the material of which it is constructed. rllhe amplifier or horn,sound box and tone arm, are acoustically the vital elements in a talkingmachine, and their arrangement, and protection from foreign influencesshould be treated with the utmost seriousness. i

In my Patent #1,193,366 of August, 1916, I referred in a comparativelybrief manner to. musical vibrations occurring entirely within a talkingmachine, as well as when a piano is affected by reason of thesympathetic vibratory relations existing between its own sound producingelements, and those of a separate sound producing substance.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Be it known that I, LvA D. Jones, a citil PatentedJ une 5,l 1917Application led February 1, 1917. Serial No. 145,990.

I n thispatent I refer to a non-resonant music cabi-net ,and describethe same as being preferably formed from reed, such as cane,

ratan, willow, or similar elements, so arranged as to havelno inherentfundamental tone, thereby constituting what I desire to call anon-resonant music cabinet. In my continued experiments I find itpractical to greatly improve the construction of a substantiallynon-resonant music cabinet, such as I* have just referred to and greatlyincrease the strength and utility of the' same by plaiting the reed orotherwise arranging it in close proximity to an inner casing which isperforated wherever air pockets, such as surround the internal horns ofmany types of talking machines, are present, thereby giving a freecirculation of air around the amplifier, so that its vibrations areunrestrained. In this way I secure results equal to those obtained inthe external horn maf,v

original, and at the same time affording a most desirable dust proofreceptacle.

My improvement in a music cabinet is instantly verified by a simple testwhich may be made by any one-By striking a drinking glass with a pencil,it will be found thatl a crlsp resonant tone is heard. Then take thesame glass and press between the index finger and thumb at or near itstop. Upon striking it the observer will find that practically 50% of theresonance is damped out, due to the controlling effect of the softfinger tips. Another. illustration of the novelty and merit of my newtalking-machine cabinet may be easily and quickly made by playing atalking machine in an empty room. A great confusion of echoes set up bythe/walls of the room will be heard, and but very little detail of themusic. A similar condition to this exists in the walls of the talkingmachine cabinet itself, and is overcome by my invention I haveaccomplished the latter result by employing the use of an internallining, made of board or even metalV-then having an external or dampingcase made over or made fixed in any suitable manner to the inner shell,thus formingy a multiple wall music cabinet, so arranged and adjusted,that one of the walls controls the excessive sympathetic resonance ofthe other, thus preventof gauze, silk, or other like substance whenplaced in the customary manner at the mouth of the horn. In talkingmachines of the solid wall type having an internal horn, I observe thatthe various sounds coming from the record find various'parts of thecabinet to a greater or less degree in sympatliy with the originalvibrations. This observation is made in a most simple manner,-by playinga talking machineV and pressing the hands firmly against the walls atvarious places. You w1ll find certain lnotes will affect separate anddistinct parts of a single board, /but more decidedly will they affectthe various boards going to make up the cabinet. The disturbance of thewalls of the talking machine set up a sound which passes outwardly yfromthe location of the disturbance, consequently this sound does not passthrough the vamplifier yand is adulterated, distorting greatly thepurity of the original tones, as it mixes with them in the room. But Ihave found that I can substantially reduce and purify these cabinetvibrations by placing a reed case over the solid ease, without evencoming in physical contact with same, so that when the sounds set up inthe cabinet portion of the talking machine proper pass through thestrands of reed, we have acondition of sound purification not greatlyunlike that resulting from the stretching of wires in an auditoriuml forthis identical purpose, which is thoroughly familiarA to acousticians.

To the above ends my invention consists of a novel construction of atalking machine cabinet or support therefor, the novel features of whichwill be hereinafter fully set forth and particularly pointed out. intheclaims. y It further consists of other novel features of constructionall of which will f' be hereinafter fully set forth. For the purpose. ofillustrating my invention I have shown in the accompanying drawings apreferred form, which at present is preferred v by me since the samewill be found in practice to 've satisfactory and reliable'results,althoug 4it is to be understood that the various instrumentalitiesofwhich my inven- Y tion of the Side wall of a 'talking machine,I

, showing a greatly magnified vibratory movement resulting fromY themotion of sound waves.

Fig. 4 shows a complete section taken on dotted lines 4-4 of Fig. 2through one wall of my novel talking machine cabinet with the plaited.case pressing firmly against the solid board orinner case.

Fig. 5 is a slight modification of Fig. 4 which shows the plaited caseslightly spaced away from the board case. Similar numerals of `referencerepresent corresponding parts in the figures.

Referring to the drawings, l represents my novel construction of-atalking machine cabinet, 2 represents the inner lining of said case, 3represents a perforation of a con- -fined air chamber.

p Fig. 2 is a plan in section of Fig. l, in which 1 indicates theplaited case which surrounds the inner board ca'se 2, 4 represents asupport on which rests the tone arm 5 and the turn table 6 ready forreproducing a talking vmachine record in any well known mannen Fig. 3 isa section of a board diagrammatically illustrating in a greatlymagnified manner the vibratory movement in the walls 4of theordinary'talking machine when thewhich the plaited case is out of actualphysi' cal contact with the inner case and serves to smother the cabinetsounds by `preventing them from passing through the plaited case l whichis spaced away from the board case '2 leaving the space 7 formed betweensaid 13 sults may be obtained by using felt, cloth, or'

other sound-deadening substances which. are

- to be construed as coming within the scope of my claims. -I have alsoshown the nonresonant casing as the outer casing. l have obtained verysatisfactory results by making the linner casing non-resonant, and surprounding' it with a resonant casing, and consider this to be within thescope of my invention. I consider, however, the provision of thevexterior non-resonant casing, and the inner resonant casing, as thepreferred embodiment of my invention. Consequently, my claims to mynovel method of construction of same, for the purpose described, are tobe construed with the corresponding scope awarded a pioneer invention.

Having thus described my invention, what l claim as new and desire tosecure by Letters Patent, is

l. A cabinet talking machine comprising an inner and an outer casing,one casing being resonant and the other non-resonant, and talkingmachine mechanism within said-inner casing including an amplifierdischarging through an opening in the wall of said inner casing, wherebythe vibrations produced in the walls of the resonant casing are dampedby the non-resonant casing. r

2. A cabinet comprising an inner resonant casing and an outernon-resonant casing, in comblnation with a sound reproducing mechanismwithin said cabinet.

3. rlhe combination with sound reproducing mechanism, of a cabinettherefor having double side walls, the inner of said walls being capableof sympathetic sound vibrations and the outer of said side walls beingincapable of sympathetic sound vibrations.

4. A cabinet, the side walls of which have per se an inherentfundamental tone, and

means associated with the outside of said slde walls to Arender themincapable of sympathetic sound vibrations, in combination with soundreproducing mechanism within said cabinet.

A 5. A cabinet talking machine comprising an innerresonant casing and ano'uter nonresonant casing, and talking machine mecha- -nism within saidinner casing having an amplifier discharging through an openmg in one ormore of the walls thereof, whereby Y the vibrations produced in thewalls of the resonant casing'are damped by the non-resonant casing.

` 6. A cabinet comprising a multiplicity of walls, said walls coactingin such a manner as to damp the excessive resonance of each other, andsound amplifying means within and discharging through the wallsvof saidcabinet. y

7. A talking machine cabinet having reproducing mechanism therein, acover for said cabinet, said cover comprlsing an inner part of resonantmaterial and an outer inclosing part of non-resonant material, wherebyexcessive vibrations of the resonant part of the cover are damped by thenon-resonant portion. l

8. A cabinet having a plurality of walls one of which is foraminous andnon-resonant and serves to damp the resonance of a juxtaposed wall, incombination with a sound reproducing mechanism. discharging into saidcabinet, the sound vibrations propagated by said mechanism anddischarged into the space within said cabinet passingfrom such spacethrough the walls of the cabinet.

9. A cabinet for a talking machine having an inner supporting structuresurrounded by a sound damping covering forming part of said cabinet,with a sound vreproducing mechanism contained within said cabinet.

ALVA D. JONES. Witnesses:

MJLLIGENT Roenes, VERNON STANTON.

